Started: July 24th
Finished: July 31st
TSM Rating: 4/5
This book was definitely different from the romance I’ve been reading lately. Don’t get me wrong, there is lots of love in this book, but not romance, which was why I picked it. Just for something a little different.
Doug is in mourning. He’s 29 years old and his wife died in a plane crash. He’s a man set adrift, unanchored, unable to find his way back to dry land. He’s allowed himself to descend into the morasses of grief and hopelessness, avoiding the rest of the living world, including his stepson who has lost his mother and is also adrift in his grief.
Throughout the book he repeats these four sentences:
I had a wife. Her name was Hailey. Now she’s gone. And so am I.
How to Talk to a Widower, multiple pages
As he’s stuck in this rut, his pregnant twin sister decides to leave her husband, while his baby sister is planning to marry his friend, whom she met while sitting shiva for Hailey. On top of it all, his father had a stroke and is only lucid enough to be remember that Hailey has died about five percent of the time.
Grief is a funny thing. It has no schedule or timeline. It can put you in a strangle hold so tight that it feels like it will never let go. But with time, patience, and little grace you can get there.
While Doug isn’t quite a lovable protagonist, you do feel for him and the depths of his despair and his apprehensions about moving forward and on and what that means for his wife’s memory.
The Saucy Mama 